


the long haul

by stag_von_simp



Category: Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Genre: Aforementioned colt's name is Scruffy, Also I Use The Phrase "The Long Haul" A Million Times, Animals, Basically they raise a baby colt, Drabble, F/M, Fluff and Angst, Friendship, Gen, Horses, I Would Die For Scruffy, I'm Sorry, Light Angst, Oneshot, Originally Posted on Tumblr, Tumblr Prompt
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-25
Updated: 2020-04-25
Packaged: 2021-03-01 21:47:45
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,311
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23834116
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/stag_von_simp/pseuds/stag_von_simp
Summary: When Dorte mates with Jeralt's mare and out comes an endearing colt by the name of Scruffy, Claude, Marianne, and Byleth find themselves in for the long haul.(technically counts as my entry for day four of mariclaude week!)
Relationships: Marianne von Edmund & My Unit | Byleth, Marianne von Edmund/Claude von Riegan, My Unit | Byleth & Claude von Riegan
Comments: 9
Kudos: 21
Collections: MariClaude Week





	the long haul

**Author's Note:**

> anonymous said: So, I got a sweet request! You know how Jeralt rides a horse? What if that horse is a female, and she's mated with Dorte and was kinda pregnant right around after Jeralt died? Then, when she pops out a baby horse, Marianne and Claude and Byleth are the godparents? And, 5 years later, Marianne rides Dorte in battle, Claude with his wyvern, and Byleth...with 5 year old offspring of his dad's horse and Dorte, in honor of Jeralt? I'll let you decide what the name can be.
> 
> ^ that was the exact request, just so you know what you're getting into before you read this :D
> 
> um, also, slight warning: the first scene is the birth of the colt. it's not graphic - even if claude is disgusted - but there is a horse giving birth, so i understand if you want to skip that part. if you just begin reading after the first page break, then you'll be okay, and you won't be lost or anything :)

“Marianne. Marianne, what are you doing?” If Marianne had snapped away from her work for even a second, she would have glimpsed something like genuine discomfort on Claude’s face, shriveled with a grimace. Unfortunately, she misses it; she doesn’t look up. She can’t, actually. “Marianne, should, uh, should you be doing this?”

Byleth mumbles something, and Claude huffs out a breath.

“Okay, according to Teach, I need to stop talking and trust you. It’s not that I don’t trust you, Marianne, because I do. It’s just…it’s not every day you see an heir to one of the highest houses in the Alliance on her knees, delivering a foal.”

“Don’t worry, Claude,” Marianne calls over her shoulder. “This isn’t my first time.”

There’s something poised, _confident_ in the cinch of her shoulders, the focus of her eyes on a part of the horse Claude hopes he’ll never find himself staring down. And it registers, a gentle rap against the back of his mind, a shudder, like laughter, in his chest: she’s so much braver than him, coaxing a tiny, bright-eyed little creature into the world, guiding a soul that’s never seen so much as a star into a world flooded by light.

She must be gutsier than he thought.

“Not your first time?” Claude feels himself cringing again.

Teach pivots to look at him, the smallest of smiles fluttering on her mouth. 

“What?” he asks, bracing for impact. Her eyes are scrunched, just like they always are when she’s about to fling a subtly wicked remark.

“I just didn’t think you were the squeamish type,” Byleth says. “I figured you could handle something as mild as a birthing.”

“Hey, it’s not mild,” Claude fires back, but a laugh blooms beneath his throat, because he didn’t fancy himself weak of stomach either. “It’s disgusting.”

“It’s beautiful,” Marianne breathes, and Claude jerks his eyes over to her before he realizes what he’s unwittingly facing now: the foal has squirmed about halfway out of its host - sorry, mother - and dangles, ready to thump the ground at any moment, and the contents of Claude’s stomach slosh. 

“Is it?” he asks, dubious.

“It is,” Byleth says, and Marianne cheers, eyelids flapping shut, mouth agape as a smile rips across her face like a wound yet to bleed, as the foal finally hits the ground.

Claude blanches back, but Byleth skids forward, landing on her knees right beside Marianne, who has never smiled like this, ever. She fumbles for the bedsheet ( _her_ bedsheet; she’s sacrificing her bedsheet for this foal) she’d brought along with her and swipes at the foal’s neck, its back, its belly. She dabs her thumb around its eyes, gently combing its fur clean. Byleth watches, amazement clear in the slump of her jaw. 

Marianne tosses back her head, pitches a laugh up for the heavens themselves to catch and treasure, then scoops the foal onto her lap. It hangs off, knobby legs flailing, and the horse that was once Jeralt’s wheels around to nip affectionately at her baby’s mane. 

Teach, Marianne, and this wriggling, new little thing, gleaming with fluid and fresh life. Suddenly, it really is beautiful. Claude doesn’t mind watching from the sidelines.

The mother is ragged. Teach scrubs the heel of her hand down the mare’s snout, murmuring congratulations for the delivery. Marianne nuzzles her face against the peak of the foal’s head, shoulders jolting with giggles. There’s sweat lacing her hairline like a crown.

She’s done so well.

Claude’s lips, captivated, soar into a smile.

“You know,” Teach hums to him, not looking away from her father’s steed for even a second, “you’re in this for the long haul now, Claude.”

“Does that mean I get to see Marianne this happy on a regular basis?”

Byleth’s eyes drift to Marianne, who’s still snuggling her pride and joy. “I think so.”

“Then it looks to me like I’m a godfather to a little horse. In for the long haul indeed.”

His eyes kiss the top of Marianne’s head, trail to her shoulders, pepper them as well. He feels like by watching her, he’s tainting her, staining the moment.

But he just can’t bring himself to stop.

–

It’s Marianne who chooses the name for their gangly godchild: Scruffy.

Claude, who’d valiantly bickered - even managing to drag a retort or two out of Marianne - for his right to choose the name himself, approves of it. Apparently, she’d chosen the name as a tribute to the mother’s original owner. When Marianne had confessed this, Claude had darted a glance over at Teach to see their eyes glinting far too brightly to pin it on the lighting.

“I…hope you don’t find it affronting, that I remember your father that way,” Marianne says, her eyes scampering after Claude’s. “I only knew him vaguely. Should I change the name?”

Byleth, lips crushed together, color wrung out of them entirely, shakes her head. “I think I’d be more affronted if you did change it,” she says, and Claude wouldn’t wipe away this manic grin of his if it were possible to do so. No, this is the type of aching, screaming joy you have no choice but to honor on your face.

So Scruffy it is, and the foal slants into the name so well: he stumbles, but once he gains his feet, the colt never stops running. His mane shoots in by the clump, long and messy and matted always. The hair is as decidedly sienna as his sire Dorte’s, though dusty white hairs scatter through his coat like the tears of winter pixies. 

Scruffy really is a beautiful horse, now that all those fluids and splotches of his mother’s have been sponged away. Claude can stand to look at him without feeling bile hatch in his throat nowadays, no longer plagued by flashbacks to the birth itself.

All he can recall of that day is the sunlight lounging on his skin and the sound of Marianne’s joy thundering up to the sky. And that’s really all he’d like to remember.

–

Three months after the birth, Scruffy is weaned off his mother: torn away from her teat, shepherded off to a stall all his own, prancing outside every day to savor his first chunks of grass. The weaning process seems callous, but it’s natural, and to see Scruffy flourishing all on his own plants a new bud of joy in Claude’s heart every day.

Because, yeah, he’s visiting every day, stomping down through the sheathes of tall grass every afternoon just to see the little fireball sear across the grounds of the Monastery at a full gallop, knees nearly thrashing together with Scruffy’s lack of grace.

He looks forward to seeing the colt every day, and spends more time than he’d like to admit blotting out the world, wondering whether Scruffy has grown overnight and, if so, how much.

It’s tragic; he’s a father before his time; he’s lobbing his youth away into the void that was once beneath his feet; he’s staggering away from the ledge he was once so eager to toe.

Well, it’s tragic until he, Teach, and Marianne are trekking back to the stables, mud clinging to the soles of their shoes as if it could ever properly annoy them. When they’re with Scruffy, watching the colt trim the grasses short, bruise the ground with the enthusiastic snare of his hooves assaulting the earth, it’s really anything but tragic.

It’s fantastic. He’s fantastic. Marianne’s giggle crackling in his ear, still, hours after he last heard it, is fantastic. Teach swimming through her own head, adoration twinkling in her eyes every single time they scrape against the colt, is fantastic.

Becoming this horse’s godfather might just be the most fantastic choice he’s ever made. Never has he been more proud to be in for the long haul.

–

“I want you to have him, Claude.”

His eyes flick to Marianne. One brow springs up in question.

“I want you to take Scruffy with you, wherever you’re going next,” Marianne says, before her eyes swivel over to the colt in question. “I wanted our professor to take him, but…”

“But we don’t know where Teach is,” Claude concludes for her.

Slowly, Marianne swings her head to the side. “Claude,” she says, voice bubbling up in the thinnest whisper. “She’s dead. She has to be dead.”

“She’s not,” Claude cuts in, adamant, and his voice sounds like a slash from a deadly sword to even his ears. “You know what I mean, Marianne. There has to be another explanation. Teach isn’t the type of person who just goes and dies.”

“Claude,” Marianne says, her eyes dissolving at the corners. Suddenly, she’s soft, too soft - dripping, water gushing down her cheeks like wax down a simmering candle. “Claude, I know how you are. You want this, therefore in your head, it’s true. But it just isn’t.” Another wave of tears leak down her face. “I’m so sorry. I hate this too.”

Claude leans over, pawing the tears from one of her cheeks. He doesn’t speak; if he so much as parts his lips, it’ll be like punching a hole through a dam and standing idle as the water squeezes through the cracks. All he can do is trace down her cheek.

“She’s not dead, Mari,” he says, once he’s finally able to harness control of his voice. And oh, there it goes, quavering, and he needs to stop, so he slams his teeth together, and pain flashes through his jaw. “I promise you that.”

“How do you know?” Marianne sobs.

“Because we weren’t done yet,” Claude says. “Because I told her my dreams, and she said we could make them so in time enough. And Teach wouldn’t leave me hanging.”

Marianne’s eyes finally rove to his, only to slide away a second later. Claude’s pinching his lips together; he can’t cry, he can’t, not now, not ever. He’s not about to waste tears on a woman who he knows for a fact is still out there. If she were dead, his gut would have vanished. If she were dead, his heart would be splattering the walls.

She was his _friend_.

She would not leave him behind.

“So you want me to take the horse,” he forces out, “so I can keep him safe and healthy until Teach returns to claim what’s hers?”

“If you would,” Marianne says. “I think I’m going to take Dorte with me back home.”

“Well, let’s get this done, then, before the emperor comes and torches us for being here.” Claude wrenches his hand away from Marianne’s face with effort, then scrabbles for a bridle for Scruffy, who scuffles in his stall, gritting his teeth as if he knows there’s something terribly amiss. He nudges his nose against Marianne’s knuckles, and she cries, cupping Scruffy by the chin. Claude freezes, clutching the bridle and gagging down the tears.

“Please, take good care of him. I know you will,” Marianne says, begging.

He can’t decide if she’s addressing him or the colt.

–

He takes remarkable care of Scruffy, actually.

And Scruffy takes even better care of him.

–

And then, just like that, Scruffy is whisked away from him.

One would think this would leave him in shambles, cradling his bleeding heart, and he would be if it weren’t Byleth whisking the silly horse away.

When Claude clinks eyes with Marianne for the first time upon seeing her at the Monastery, with his Teach at his shoulder, the first thing he does is charge over to her, barreling gracelessly at record speed, and bundle her up in the hugest hug he’s ever given.

After that, he pokes his nose to hers and gloats. “I told you she was alive.”

Marianne’s fingers weave through his own. “I should’ve believed you,” she admits, an apology sighing into her words, making them heavy. “I’m–”

“Beautiful. You’re beautiful. You better have been saying that instead of sorry.”

Marianne twists away from him as her cheeks go slick with heat. Over her shoulder, Claude peeks over at Teach, whose smile is starlit.

Byleth’s eyes flash. _So you’re in love with her, aren’t you?_

And Claude, too, bursts into a blush. _I’m in for the long haul._

–

Claude will never warm up to the nervous scrambling of his friends and soldiers before every battle. It never changes, and it never will: everyone fiddling with their armor, palms sweating against metal blades and leather books, rustling words of ingenuity they’ll take back once they know they’ll survive another day. He hates the bounce of electricity rattling beneath his skin, itching, making him not loathe the thought of gnawing his own flesh from the bones before his enemies shear it all off for him.

What he likes is stability. And that is not this.

What keeps him from tearing himself apart is the soft pressure of Marianne’s fingers grinding into his palm, the blur of Teach’s nimble fingers fastening a saddle onto Scruffy, who towers now, eye-level with Claude. The boy has become a man - both boys have.

Marianne’s speaks, lips tickling his earlobe, she’s so close: “I’d better go prepare Dorte, Claude. Please be safe.”

“Don’t worry about me, I’ll be above it all,” he brushes her off. “It’s Teach you need to focus on. She’s the one with Scruffy, and if anything happens to that horse, then we’re all doomed. Mark my words.”

A smile ignites on Marianne’s face. “Sometimes, it’s terribly difficult to figure out whether you’re being serious or flippant.”

“Most of the time, it’s the latter. But Scruffy’s not a joke.”

Somehow, Marianne’s smile expands. “You love him like a son.”

_And I love you like a future_ , he comes dangerously close to replying.

Instead, he simply says: “I went in for the long haul with this horse, Marianne. And in the long haul shall I stay.”


End file.
